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All the terabytes of hardware storage on display, he suggested, and the myriad methods for storing, retrieving and preserving data, will be needed as businesses struggle for a technological solution to governmental regulation.

The gist of his speech was that when it comes to customer data storage, and the legal requirements surrounding it, increasingly businesses find they can't live with it and can't live without it. In other words, to fail to preserve data at all could see a company go bust, but the requirements are so increasingly onerous that a slavish following of all possible regulations could fatally compromise productivity. The business would go bust anyway.

Working with Eurim (an independent, UK-based, all-party, Parliament Industry group related to the use of ICT products and services), he is well aware of the increasing EU regulations and UK regulations in this area. And the picture he painted of businesses at once confined and burdened by red tape was not a happy one.

The danger is that an unfocused, catch-all data capture approach will produce 'electronic black bin bag laws', he said, indiscriminately capturing data that no-one will ever subsequently wade through. The impact for UK and Euro businesses, he suggested, would be an exit to the shores of 'Dubai and Singapore where the regulations are more suitable for good business practice.'

Not only is their an extensive list of data capture requirements - whether via Sarbanes-Oxley or Basel II, or other systems - but there are also conflicting requirements for data storage. Emails to be preserved for three years, for example, while some financial transactions have to be stored indefinitely.

Governments and regulators, he insisted, need to produce more relevant legislation in consultation with the relevant industries.

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When it comes to framing such regulation, relevant trade bodies need to work together, along with various industry segments, including user-groups.

One example he quoted involved legislation regarding the crime of money laundering, and the data monitored by the Financial Services Authority. Apparently the required process involves faxing copies of a PDF form. All well and good, except the team delegated to monitor this data - which firms are more or less conscientiously capturing (this is itself apparently a matter of interpretation) - is completely overworked. He knows of one case, he declared, where a financial organisation has repeatedly documented a very suspicious triangulated transfer of funds - that has all the characteristics of a laundering exercise - but it has received no response from the unit responsible. They, too, are suffering from the data overload.

The image he presented was of large room repeatedly stuffed with unread, dusty documents. A lot of time-consuming effort for no practical purpose.

Of course, with Eurim highlighting the threat of e-crime and Internet safety, he is aware of the threat that technology can pose, and the need to responsibly capture meaningful information that could aid law-enforcement agencies. He suggests, however, that the balance has been lost, with businesses increasingly burdened for no good purpose.

Showing a literary flair, he likened the increasing degree of regulation to a stifling bureaucracy, Kafkaesque in its nature. Another Czech author, he suggested, showed a possible solution - Hasek's Good Soldier Schweik, a precursor to Sergeant Bilko if you will. In other words, he stated, the balance that CIOs will realistically have to strike is to appear a good citizen in terms of conformance, but maybe cynically play the system to avoid paralysing the business itself.

The truth is, he pointed out, that crimes will always be possible regardless of the regulations and requirements imposed on a business. Would the costly mandates of Sarbanes-Oxley have prevented the Enron scandal? The answer seems to be no.

Looking ahead, with the increasing amount of data being captured and the ever developing forms of wireless online communications, can the situation only worsen? 'Yes,' he declared, 'more and more data must be stored and managed, the problem can only get worse. And that's why all the exhibitors [at Storage Expo] will be crying all the way to the bank.'